When Odd Things Happen...
by Sara the Green Witch
Summary: Cliched, Mary-Sue angst. BUT, non romance. Its only redeeming quality. But read, rather humorous...Two is up, but incomplete. Sorry in advance, and read the warning please. :D
1. And the Intro to My Own Shame...;)

DISCLAIMER: I. Own. Nothing. Except Sarah and the Swimly's. What a silly name. I found it in a phone book. Heh. The whole story plot, too, of course, is mine.  
  
NOTES: Not been beta'ed. Blame all grammatical mistakes on me. Yes, Sarah is me. This is a non-romance Mary Sue, which is something I'd sworn I'd never do. BUT, I hope you enjoy it, and please leave good reviews, I looove reviews.  
  
"Just to let you know, I hate this stupid country and this stupid development with its stupid people and stupid rules and stupid traditions!" this yelled from the mouth of a rather flustered teenage girl of rather below-average height with rather straight purple hair and, at the moment anyway, rather blazing blue eyes. Her parents, sitting at the kitchen table downstairs, rolled their eyes.  
  
"You used the word 'stupid' five times in one sentence! I think you broke your own record!" her mother replied.  
  
"I could think up a few other choice words, you know! Like 'this fu-"  
  
"That's quite alright!" her father interrupted.  
  
"That wasn't even going to be my most creative one!"  
  
"I don't wanna hear it! Go to your room!"  
  
"Like that's a real punishment…" said teenage girl muttered, slouching down the hall to her room, which was filled with books of all sorts, her own computer, a CD player, a guitar, and a television.  
  
This girl was rather far from being termed "normal", certainly. Other than having purple hair, though, she appeared perfectly average on the outside. No, this girl was not a normal girl.  
  
Sarah Swimly was a witch.  
  
She didn't know it, of course. That would take all the fun out of an introduction. The whole point of this story is to tell how she first finds out she's a witch. And that would be:  
  
By owl, of course.  
  
Sheesh. You people really shouldn't expect anything else. That is, after all, the normal way one receives one's mail, is it not?  
  
Back to the story.  
  
Sarah and the rest of her immediate Swimly clan, omitting her older brother, who was currently in Italy, and her older sister, who was still in West Virginia with her own family, were in a new home. Sarah, her mother, and her father had just recently moved to London, England. It was her father's idea. He desperately wanted out of West Virginia. A rather horrible idea, on Sarah's part. She had just started at a new high school, and had just finished her freshman year. And now her father decided to uproot her and drag her a thousand miles away from everything familiar to her. Great job, Dad! Sarah, of course, was miserable. Can't really blame the poor girl. Anyway.  
  
Sarah had been noticing some rather strange occurrences in the past month or so since her arrival to her new home. Very strange.  
  
Like once, after she'd had a rather nasty fight with her mother about their differing styles, Sarah woke up with purple hair. Yes, you heard me, purple. Very purple hair. Sarah, of course, was delighted. But she had a tough time explaining to her mother why her hair was purple instead of its usual auburn. She finally just told the older woman that yeah, sure, she "dyed it. Whatever. You obviously don't want the truth…."  
  
And that wasn't the creepiest. Well, neither is this next one. But that doesn't matter. This one's kinda cool.  
  
Sarah had lost something vitally important to her. This something was her very essence, her soul, her life. She couldn't live without it. And she was sure she'd left it in her old house in West Virginia. But she wasn't about to admit that right now because she was too panic-stricken to think clearly.  
  
So Sarah was found frantically tearing the house apart from rooftop to basement floor, chanting like a demented mantra, "It's here, I know it's here, it has to be here. It can't be anywhere else. It's here, I know it's here…." And so forth. Her parents were getting worried. She'd been searching for this mysterious "it" for three days. Her father was about to say something to her when she stood up suddenly and said, "Maybe it's in my room. I only checked there four times…."  
  
She dashed up stairs, leaving her father standing there with his mouth open.  
  
She entered her room, determined not to break down and sob if it weren't there. She also hoped she wouldn't go homicidal and murder someone if it weren't. She knew it wasn't, but maybe if she hoped hard enough it would be. She cautiously peeked around the corner of her room. She then sighed in relief. There, sitting on her bed looking as though it had been there the whole time, was the backbone for her life.  
  
Her poetry notebook was just sitting there, with its usual pen sticking on its ratty old cover.  
  
And here's the creepy one, the doozy, the biggy, the "oh my GOD, how'd she do THAT?"  
  
Sarah turned her laptop into a mouse and fed it to her pet snake, Orestes Sybil.  
  
Don't you all wish you could do that?  
  
The only thing, she didn't realize it was her laptop. It just so happened that she kept her computer next to her mouse cage. She just figured one got out after she stormed away from her infuriating machine to cool off for a minute. And since it was out, and Orestes needed a feeding, she just grabbed it, clonked it over the head, and fed it to him.  
  
She wondered about her odd feeling of supreme satisfaction at that act for about a month afterwards.  
  
She figured it out after she found a small computer chip in Orestes' cage when she cleaned it out.  
  
Some would call these things coincidences, though I certainly don't understand how. People just can't go randomly turning computers into mice. Things like that just don't happen. But Muggles are known to ignore the obvious.  
  
But Sarah didn't know what a Muggle was.  
  
Yet.  
  
She'd stumble across her admittance into a whole new world of such knowledge on a perfectly average day when she went outside to get the mail.  
  
There was a rather thick, parchment-like envelope with her name on it written in emerald ink. With no return address. So Sarah did what any American sent such a letter would do in such a situation.  
  
She threw it away.  
  
The next day there was another letter just like it, addressed, once again, to her.  
  
She threw it away again.  
  
The day after when she got a third such letter, she started getting worried.  
  
So this time she did what any teenage girl would do in such a situation.  
  
"MOOOOOMM!!! COME OPEN THIS LETTER FOR ME!"  
  
"What is it, dear?" Her mother asked, being kind and mother-like. For once.  
  
"I think it's a mail bomb or something. It's weird. No return address or anything."  
  
"So of course you'd want your mother to open this for you."  
  
"Um. Yeah?"  
  
"Let's get your father…"  
  
Finally they got the letter open, having convinced Mr. Swimly to open it outside, using thick rubber gloves, safety goggles, and a carpenter's apron. When it didn't explode, he handed it to Sarah to read.  
  
"Okay, this has got to be some sort of a joke…"  
  
Then she saw the fine print at the bottom of the letter, which said:  
  
  
  
  
  
This is no joke. I rather wish it were.  
  
Signed:  
  
Albus Dumbledore  
  
  
  
"You guys might wanna read this…" Sarah said numbly, walking over a sitting on a lawn chair.  
  
After reading through it a few times, her parents finally got it.  
  
"Oh," her mother said faintly and,  
  
"We best get the house cleaned up for guests…" her father said, trailing off.  
  
Sarah and her mother glared at him.  
  
"What? I mean, this letter says that someone, and it's probably someone important, and the house is a pigsty… Oh, forget it." And with that, he stomped inside.  
  
"So now what?" Sarah asked.  
  
  
  
(fin)  
  
* * *  
  
A/N(Again): I know, cliffhanger. Sorry. First chapter. I'm gonna continue writing this, feedback or no, but I'd appreciate input. ONE good review, and I'll continue posting. I only want to put stuff up people like to read, is all. Otherwise, this'll just be between my friends and I. 


	2. The Strange Man At The Door...:S

WARNING: This is really bad. My brain has decided to lock up on me, so I have severe writer's block. Therefore this chapter has no ending. SERIOUS cliffhanger, and I'm apologizing profusely in advance of you reading this, and I'm really warning you against it, because if you're anything like me you HATE cliffhangers. So, yeah. Sorry. And another little warning: Sarah uses the word "Ya'll". She's a West Virginian, though, so what can you expect? I'm making her accent rather mild, but trust me: You'll be getting a LOT of distinctly West Virginia speech out of her. And she'll mock herself sooner or later.  
  
I have so many ideas for this story, but they're all further ahead than now. So don't be surprised if I skip a head a LOT and make the chapters shorter and more scene-like, 'cause that's all I have in my head right now: scenes.  
  
Oh! And one last thing before I leave: I want to know where Fred and George's joke shop should be, Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley? Diagon Alley, Sarah gets to meet 'em sooner, Hogsmeade she gets to see 'em more often. Just tell me, first review with a response and I'll use that vote! :D Lol. I'm so pitiful. Gah. Anywho, on with the more important stuff.  
  
DISCLAIMER: Haven't we been through this? Oh well. I own nothing except Sarah and the rest of the Swimly clan, and the plot. Except what I'm stealing directly from Rowling, which is a LOT. Sorry!  
  
A/N: Chapter two! Yippee! Whatever. This is about the mysterious guest and Sarah's trip to Diagon Alley. Oh, gee, I wonder who she bumps into?…  
  
"When'd it say they'd be here? It's almost two-thirty now!" Sarah asked, pacing back and forth in her living room.  
  
"It didn't really say," her mother said, looking about as worried as Sarah.  
  
"I thought these Brits had manners…." Sarah muttered as her father was scrambling about in the kitchen, trying to clean it up some more. "Would you quit with the frickin' O.C.D. like behavior??" she yelled at him.  
  
And then, the knock.  
  
"About time!" Sarah exclaimed, running to the door. She then stopped, ran a hand through her hair, and threw open the door.  
  
And then, quite suddenly, Sarah found herself staring into the eyes of the scariest old man she'd ever seen.  
  
"Mind if I come in?" he asked, quite nicely, seeming to have not noticed the look of horrified wonderment on Sarah's face.  
  
"Um…Sure?" she answered.  
  
The man, wearing what seemed to be a violently violet sweater-vest over a putridly pink shirt and a pair of yellow-green trousers, was probably the scariest human being on earth. And his clothes weren't even what had Sarah's hackles up. This man had a very, very, very long white beard and very, very, very long white hair. He had half-moon glasses perched on a vulture-like beak. And the insane, happy-go-lucky glint in his eyes didn't help much, either.  
  
He certainly wasn't what Sarah had been expecting.  
  
Well, okay, she wasn't really SURE what she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't a fellow who obviously liked to dress in the dark. But, oh well, he was there and Sarah's curiosity had been piqued overnight.  
  
"So, um, it said in my letter that I was a 'very special case'. Why's that?" Sarah asked before the old man had even sat down in the living room.  
  
"Getting right the questions, hmm? Good, good. Well, you're a 'very special case' because most students are enrolled at near-about age eleven," the old man replied.  
  
"Oh. Does that mean that I'll be behind?"  
  
"Yes. But I'll be sure to have several teachers and students available to tutor you. We've been watching you since you came to England, Sarah, and it seems as though you're a very bright girl."  
  
"Oh! I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself…Wait a second. You've been WATCHING me??" Sarah was getting more and more scared by the minute.  
  
"I'm Albus Dumbledore, by the way. You may call me 'Professor Dumbldore'. And yes, we've been watching you. I do apologize, but we do it to everyone who comes to England."  
  
"Oh. Okay then. I think. Anyway. I have so many questions! But I think Mom and Dad want to talk with you, first…you mind waiting a second while I get them?"  
  
"Not at all," he replied, smiling.  
  
Not a half-second after she scampered (yes, she's quite capable of scampering) he heard from the kitchen, "Okay, okay. Sheesh. Calm down. You'd think it was Walt Disney back from the dead. One second."  
  
He heard the clatter of pots and pans, then a few moments later a middle-aged woman and man came in.  
  
Dumbledore stood and extended his hand. "Ah, hello. You must me Mrs. And Mr. Swimly. I'm Albus Dumbledore."  
  
Mr. Swimly shook his hand, then Mrs. Swimly. "Um, you don't mind us getting straight to the point, do you?" Mr. Swimly asked.  
  
"I'm just as eager as you are, I'm sure," Dumbledore replied.  
  
"Well, ah, okay then. We have quite a few questions for you…"  
  
Dumbledore and the parental units (() discussed Sarah's future education as a witch for nearly an hour before Mr. And Mrs. Swimly realized how long they'd been talking.  
  
"Oh, dear! Sarah must be dying of curiosity by now. I'll just go get her now…" Mr. Swimly said.  
  
"Don't worry about it, Dad, I was just coming down to see what was taking ya'll so long." Sarah said, walking in. 


End file.
